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Bit.ly

Bitly (formerly Bit.ly) is a URL shortening and bookmarking service owned by Bitly, Inc., a Betaworks company. The current CEO is Peter Stern.

The Bitly URL shortening service is popular on microblogging website Twitter because it was the default URL shortening service on the website since May 6, 2009, replacing TinyURL. Several competing services, such as Trim, shut down their services after they found that it was difficult to compete with Bitly on Twitter. In addition to its main URL shortening service, the website provides tools to view statistics related to users that click on generated links. The company behind Bitly launched a similar service, but for online videos, to determine what videos are the most popular on the web.

Bitly announced October 12, 2010 that users can now automatically generate QR Codes that, when scanned with a mobile QR code reader, automatically direct users to shortened links.

Bitly Enterprise is a sharing platform to allow a business to manage multiple...

50 Recent Stories

Bitly, the popular URL shortening tool, suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Wednesday, which impacted portions of its website. The company confirmed the attack with the following statement on the main page of its site on Wednesd...

One of the clunkier aspects of the mobile experience is the lack of a seamless transition from app to app. For instance, when LinkedIn sends you an email about a new connection, the accompanying link sends you to LinkedIn's homepage rather than its a...

Ever wonder what stories or news outlets are being shared most by people in your state? Bit.ly has you covered. Bit.ly, the popular URL shortening service, unveiled a fascinating feature on Thursday called the Media Map, which ranks the most popular ...

Bit.ly, the popular URL shortening tool, is taking a step beyond basic URL shortening and allowing users to express their feelings about shared links. The company introduced a new bookmarklet on Wednesday called Bit.ly for Feelings, which offers a se...

The Internet is massive -- more than 634 million websites host more than 30 trillion pages -- so we all need some help cutting through to the good stuff. Many of us turn to social media sites, where we come across links that have been shrunken and sh...

Bit.ly says it has heard its disgruntled users loud and clear and is ready to change its ways -- again. After a backlash last week following a redesign of the site, Bit.ly announced Wednesday it has made some tweaks to make its beloved URL-shortening...

No longer a simple URL shortner, Bitly has expanded access to its data archive, improved discovery and introduced an entire redesign, so that you may more easily monitor your shortlink shares. However, "easily" may be a misnomer -- reactions to Bitly...

Link shortening and tracking service bit.ly got a major makeover on Tuesday. It offers a slew of new features to help make link sharing more dynamic -- from bookmarks and profiles, to its first-ever iPhone app. Although the new tools will surely add ...

Want your link to get the most traction on Twitter? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET. Link shortening and tracking service bit.ly has released new data on the best and worst times to share links on popular social networks, from ...

If you're doing most of your sharing on Pinterest from the office, you're doing it wrong. The best time to share things on Pinterest is Saturday morning, according to data from Bitly, the URL shortening service. Hilary Mason, Bitly's chief scientist,...

For link-shortening service Bit.ly, finding a way to jazz up its simple, cut-and-dry product was a challenge. How can a little web tool make a visual impact in a thoughtful way? Neil Wehrle, VP of user experience at Betaworks, found a simple answer t...

News.me, the Betaworks-incubated iPad application for discovering news articles experts and friends see on Twitter, became an independent company Wednesday. The just-hatched startup's first order of business was to do away with the cost-prohibitive $...

When it comes to spreading popular content around the web, where you post matters. A study that link-shortening service Bit.ly released on its blog Tuesday shows that different kinds of links rise and fizzle at different speeds -- depending on the pl...

The web's dominant URL shortener, Bit.ly, has acquired social publishing tool Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is a tool that automatically publishes RSS feeds to social networks with a title and shortened Bit.ly link. Using the service, you can set your blo...

When you're an entrepreneur, you don't have much time to eat. Therefore, your life is made a lot easier and more efficient if your lunch is on wheels and can come to you. Enter the food truck, which has become a go-to lunch staple for busy entreprene...

New York City officially proclaimed June 30 as Social Media Day on Thursday. Mashable is thrilled to make this joint announcement with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne. “Mayor Bloomberg’s proclamation reinforces the gro...

Want to see how influential you are on Twitter? A new app called Sneak Peek not only does that; it also tells you how influential everyone else is. Visibli, a web analytics firm, aims to be a “Compete for social sharing” with the app, which went live...

A new startup is seeking to reinvent the short URL by turning it into a promotional tool for brands and causes. At its core, Bre.ad is a URL shortener. It shortens links, syncs to Twitter and Facebook and provides click analytics. But its big selling...

News.me, the much-anticipated social news reading application for the iPad, arrived in the App Store Thursday. There's two big differences between News.me and existing competitors Flipboard and Zite: 1) It's designed to help users discover what the p...

Bit.ly has just expanded its service again with a feature that will delight groups of people who love to share links. Bit.ly, the web service that condenses links into bite-sized phrases that are easily tweeted, already added a powerful Bundles featu...

The Better Profiles Series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com. While the rest of us were copy-and-pasting mumbo-jumbo from URL shorteners into our Twitter accounts, sites like The New York Times were ...

Link-sharing service Bit.ly has just launched a new tool for people who really, really love sharing links. Bit.ly Bundles allow you to package multiple long links in a single shortened URL. This is a highly useful feature with an almost endless strin...

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Na...

URL shortening service bit.ly announced Tuesday that users can now automatically generate QR codes that, when scanned with a mobile QR code reader, automatically direct users to shortened links. To create a QR code, visit bit.ly, write or paste in a ...

Bit.ly has just announced a $10 million Series B round led by RRE Ventures (which has invested in Drop.io, Xobni and BuzzFeed, among others) and joined by AOL Ventures, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Betaworks, Ron Conway's SV Angel and a host of other...

Don't try to use Bit.ly links on Facebook; they have been marked by the world's largest social network as abusive, leading to dead end pages and frustrated users. Posting Bit.ly links on Facebook is currently impossible. If you attempt to share a lin...

Want to know what's happening anywhere in the world right now? Twitter is where it's at. Want to know what's been happening over time and in the context of other events? That's where it gets a little more complicated. Fortunately, Twitter's open API ...

In an effort to bypass the obscurity of shortened links and to prevent malware and phishing attacks, Twitter has begun the rollout of t.co, its official URL shortener, along with some major changes to how the microblogging platform handles links. In ...

URL shortening and analytics service bit.ly will soon be launching bit.ly 1.3, the newest version of the most popular URL shortener. In addition, the company is launching an enterprise version of bit.ly Pro, which will be available later today. The n...

GMAIL USERS: We hope you'll join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account. Yesterday we added Google Buzz buttons to Mashable, letting you share our stories to Google's new social network as you can on Twitter and Facebook. Today we adde...

Bit.ly, as the world's largest URL shortener and default for Twitter messages, has thousands of links passing through its doors every day. Because of that, it has a great deal of data on what's hot and what's popular on the web. Now the company is fi...

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